


ink

by girlguidejones



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Bottom Damen, M/M, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-19
Updated: 2016-05-19
Packaged: 2018-06-09 05:15:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6891670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlguidejones/pseuds/girlguidejones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Damen wishes to gift Laurent with something both unexpected and meaningful for their wedding night.  This is every bit as difficult as it sounds.  Luckily, he has Nikandros to help him.  Meanwhile, Laurent has chosen the same medium to deliver a few precious gifts of his own to Damen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	ink

**Author's Note:**

> Deepest thanks to [tebtosca](http://archiveofourown.org/users/tebtosca/pseuds/tebtosca) for her very helpful beta. Any remaining errors or bad thematic choices are solely mine.
> 
> Photo manip by [mrsrobinson](http://archiveofourown.org/users/mrsrobinson/pseuds/mrsrobinson). Isn't she great? :)

Damen trudges through the marketplace, Nikandros a silent companion beside him.  It’s hot, and unusually humid for Akiel—for southern Artes, Damen silently corrects himself.  In a week he and Laurent will be wed and the last legalities signed, bringing one nation into being.  For now, he would be happy enough for the sky to release the crushing press of rain that currently dampens everything.

Even his own confidence.

“It’s a good thing,” says Nikandros, reading his mood, but incorrectly translating it as mere disgruntlement with the weather.  “The rain will bring the bloom,” he says with a smile.  “It’ll be as though you gave orders for nature itself to celebrate your union.”

Damen pauses beside a public water fount, filling cups for both of them. It was one of the first things he’d done when returning, ordering these to be dug wherever there was a natural spring on royal land.  The merchants selling wine and chilled juices complained at first, as Laurent warned him would happen.  Until they saw how business remained steady on brutally hot days, where before they would have closed early, or not opened at all.

“I’d prefer to think the sky gods approved of their own accord, rather than I had to order it,” Damen says wryly as he swallows a cool gulp of water.  He briefly imagines the explosion of flora that Nikandros predicts, knowing his friend is right.  It will make for a beautiful procession through the royal gardens on their wedding day.  

He tosses a coin in the cup of today’s designated spirits vendor, set up nearby.  That was Laurent’s idea, to temper Damen’s insistence that the poor be able to buy enough bread and vegetables without having to faint away or spend money they couldn’t afford on drinks. 

__________

_“You want to license all of the market vendors, yes?” Laurent asked.  They had taken up the discussion of Damen’s water idea in their rooms, as it had been tabled without a decision in the council chambers earlier today._

_“A **free** license,” said Damen stubbornly._

_“Yes, yes,” Laurent waved away his concern. “The point is, you’ll know who’s there on any given day, correct?”_

_“Yes. But I don’t see how—“_

_“We schedule all the beverage vendors in a queue. They take turns selling wares by the water station. They put out an urn, for those who can afford it, to pay a voluntary gratuity in appreciation for the water.”_

_“But if it is a gratuity, and not a tax, who would bother to pay it?” Damen asked curiously.  Laurent, clearly already having placed a mental tick mark next to the capitulation Damen had yet to yield, reclined gracefully on the low bench in their solar._

_“Why, the Kings of Artes, of course.  And the kyrios, and the council members…” he trailed off, blinking blandly at Damen._

_“And the prosperous merchants who have contracts with the throne?”_

_“I’m certain Charls’ generosity will be a model for his peers,” Laurent said blandly._

_“It will if he wants the royal contracts for banner-cloth to be renewed,” Damen muttered._

_“Mmmm,” answered Laurent, examining a thread on his jacket.  That couldn’t be all of it.  Damen turned the idea over in his mind.  It had a premise, a solution, and a twist.  But one twist was always insufficient for a mind like Laurent’s.  If there weren’t multiple switchbacks he considered it a failure.  A straightforward plan was simply laziness on the part of the planner._

_“I don’t suppose the gratuities go **entirely** to the day’s merchant, do they?” Damen guessed dryly, as he let a slow smile spread across his face._

_Laurent’s answering smile was brilliant, as if the moon had suddenly moved out from behind a cloud.  Damen supposed he should take insult at these moments when Laurent seemed proud of Damen for following his mental acrobatics._

_Perhaps he would, if Laurent’s brilliance didn’t make Damen’s cock rise more often than not._

_“It seems only prudent to ensure that Artes has the funds to maintain these vital resources for her people,” Laurent said primly.  “Perhaps the crown takes a copper for every gold, with the day’s merchant keeping the rest?  A pittance, really.”_

_“Negligible,” Damen nodded.  He went to his knees beside the couch, reaching for Laurent’s laces._

_“What—now?—“ Laurent interjected._

_“There’s no help for it.  I find your wicked mind to be deeply arousing,” Damen said, burying his nose against the newly-revealed skin of Laurent’s lower belly as his fingers worked further at the lower lacings._

_“I—I’m fairly certain that’s not where it’s located,” Laurent countered.  Damen shuddered as Laurent’s hands buried themselves in Damen’s hair; he felt no need to disengage._

_“It will be when I’m finished with you,” Damen laughed in reply, licking a line from navel to tip as he closed a fist around Laurent._

_“Conceit does not become you,” Laurent retorted, even as he shivered and his thighs fell open.  Damen gnawed at their delicate insides through Laurent’s trousers. He liked the idea of the bruises he knew would rise, even through the fabric._

_“Not conceit,” Damen replied, raising his head and grinning.  Laurent quirked a brow.  “Experience.”_

_“Barbarian,” Laurent grit out as Damen reached for him again.  Damen bent to his task without looking up._

_“Mmmmm,” he said, and swallowed him down._

_________

“Isn’t it enough that you and Laurent approve?” Nikandros asks, pulling Damen out of his reverie. 

“Are we the only ones?” Damen asks searchingly, meeting Nikandros’s gaze.  Nik is his closest friend, more of a brother than Kastor had ever truly been.  It _is_ enough, he thinks, if he and Laurent are of one mind, and one heart, and he knows they are.  But it would be nice if in this one, vital thing he had more than the minimum requirement of support.

“You have my approval to marry your icy prince,” Nikandros says grudgingly.  “Not as though you need it.”  Damen smiles widely, clasping Nik’s shoulder tightly.

“I’m glad, truly,” he answers. “But why?  You don’t like him.”  Nikandros scoffs.

“Like?  I can barely refrain from throttling him, most days,” he grumbles, before softening his tone and looking directly at Damen.  “But you’re content, as if your belly is full, and gleaming, as if oiled for a match, whenever he is near."  Nikandros pauses, considering.  "It’s sickening, really.”

Damen laughs, but can’t resist asking further.

“And Laurent?  When I’m near?”  he says.

“His carriage is haughtier, his tongue is sharper…” Nikandros falters, before continuing more gently.   “And he looks for all the world like a man given a gift he longed for and never thought to have.”

“I—I never thought to hear such from you, friend.” Damen says quietly.  “It means a great deal…no, it means _everything_ to me.”

“Well, it was never about the look on your face, after all,” Nikandros says.  “It’s as a book, writ large for the elderly.”  Damen laughs, feeling his face heat, but doesn’t waste the breath it would take to deny it.  “It’s in catching the way he looks at you, when he thinks no one is watching, that I know the match is a true one.”

They finish the rest of the water in companionable silence, Damen swallowing his more to clear the lump in his throat that Nik’s words brought than from thirst.

“It’s exactly that part that makes me doubt the choice of this gift,” Damen says as they continue through the market on their original course.

“What part do you mean?” Nikandros asks curiously.

“How it is that he hides himself, that he shields his heart from other gazes,” Damen answers, “sometimes even mine.  I have to dig for kernels at times.”

“Does it hurt you?”  Nikandros asks softly.  Damen bristles at the implied criticism, but when he turns his head, it’s only concern he sees in Nik’s face, not judgement.  He takes a moment to examine his own heart before answering.

“No,” he says slowly.  “It is only his way.  He had to present in that manner, shield himself, to survive his uncle.  I don’t think he is capable of being otherwise, at least not for now.”  Damen pauses, then grins.  “Besides, it is generally enjoyable getting him to let go of it.”  Nikandros groans good-naturedly but makes a rude gesture that belies any pretense of delicacy.

“So you think wearing his reference on your skin is not something he’ll appreciate, given his nature.”  Nikandros says it like a statement, rather than an inquiry, which tells Damen he’s already thought the same.  Damen nods.

“I think it will make him uncomfortable to have others comment on it,” he answers. 

“And they _will_ comment,” Nikandros concurs, then he stops mid-step, causing a boy with a basket of honey-sticks to squawk indignantly as he has to quick-step around them, clearly ignorant of their identity.  “But not if they don’t see it,” he says, sly and pleased with himself, practically reminiscent of the man in question.

“I—I don’t know, Nik.  Putting it somewhere it can be hidden beneath a cuff or cloth might make him think I’m hesitant for others to see,” Damen frowns.

“That’s because you’re thinking backwards,” Nikandros continues excitedly.  “It isn’t about hiding it from others.  It’s about putting it somewhere it’s only _his_ privilege to uncover.

“Somewhere…intimate?” Damen asks as Nikandros nods happily, now urging him into moving again, toward their original destination.  Damen blanches.  “You mean…” 

“Gods, no!” Nikandros bursts into laughter.  “Not _there_!  He would only make jests about how your devotion lacks constancy, and seems to _wax_ and _wane_.”

Damen groans, but Nik is right.  He can practically hear Laurent as they speak, making the most vulgar clinical observations in his acidly pristine tones.

“Then, where?”

“Surely there is a place where his attention is drawn, when you lie beneath him?” Nikandros asks, pulling him aside into a quiet shadow.  “You do lie beneath him do you not?  At times?”  

Nikandros knows the answer very well, Damen thinks.  They’ve lain together themselves, with and without others, in the way that young men who love each other do when they explore their bodies. Though they have not since before Damen was betrayed by Kastor and became a slave to Laurent, Damen is certain they still would, had things gone differently.

“You know I am willing,” he says lowly, desire rocketing unbidden through him, interspersed with images of both Laurent and Nikandros above him.

“Then that is the moment you should consider for reference,” Nikandros answers, smiling affectionately.  “If it is to be about giving something up to him, for his pleasure alone, it should be drawn from those times, in that place where his lips and his gaze are drawn to, when you are under him.”

“I know the place,” Damen says, breathing heavily.  He is certain a looking glass would reveal a flushed reflection, his eyes glittering with desire.

“Then let’s go,” Nikandros laughs, and tugs him by the hand as though they were boys again.  

The shop itself is somewhat less tidy than Damen would prefer, although it does much to help bank the desire Nikandros’ words had wrought.  He would very much wish not to be aroused under a stranger’s hands.  At a wink from Nik, the proprietor shutters the windows and turns out the closed sign, leaving only himself and one other apprentice inside with the two of them.

The apprentice sets to work, placing out needles and ink across two workbenches; Damen is gratified to see that the tools and the pallets are, by contrast to the building itself, spotless.  If he contracts a blood disease from this Laurent will never let it go.

Damen had wheedled Nik with tales of the dire consequences of broken friendship, but in the end Nikandros agreed to be marked himself, and in a more visible spot.  They needed a reason to be there in case someone spotted King Damianos and his most trusted friend at a dubious inking parlor.  The second half of the plan was for the two of them to return to the castle too drunk to stand unaided, about which Nikandros did not need convincing at all.

Nik has already shown the apprentice the tattoo he wants prior to today, a traditional grain-and-hoofprint design native to Delpha.  It had made Damen twinge with regret and shame when he had first seen it, but Nikandros had only smiled with reassurance.

“It is merely to honor my first home, Dam,” Nik says, using the most private boyhood name that belonged only between the two of them.  

“I know, Nikky, but I will never be able—“

“Shhhh,” Nikandros hushes him, smiling, with a squeeze to his shoulder.

“It’s not out of regret or bitterness, I promise you.”

It was Veretian wedding custom itself that had enabled the plan, otherwise it would have been impossible for the tattoo to be a surprise.  Before he’d conceived of the idea for the tattoo, Damen had protested vigorously when Laurent had informed him they could not see each other for the twelve days prior to the wedding.

___________

_”Twelve?”  Damen gaped at him from across the room.  “Are we needing to grow surprise beards, or forget the color of each others’ eyes, in order that the union be sanctified? What possible reason justifies such a separation?”_

_Laurent sniffed. “It’s tradition; one night for each point on the Veretian starburst.”_

_“Oh, of course,” Damen replied.  “Because one’s pre-marriage interactions should be secondary to a gaudy piece of cloth.”_

_“So desirous of me, beloved?” Laurent answered placidly.  “You went months without my body when you were my slave.”_

_“I am still your slave,” Damen said hotly, as he stalked closer to where Laurent was holding himself rigid._

_“That isn’t going to work,” Laurent replied, but though his chin was lifted in practiced disregard, he spoke while looking past Damen’s shoulder, not into his eyes, and a tell-tale flush was creeping along his cheeks._

_“Seems to be working fairly well at the moment,” Damen said, stepping behind Laurent to lift his golden hair and speak his words against Laurent’s nape._

_“Well,” Laurent began, before pausing to draw a shaky breath.  Damen continued to breathe softly against Laurent’s neck, just above his lace-adorned collar, while never actually touching the delicate white-blue skin there.  The finely polished, bone-tinted ceramics Veretians serve their meals upon could only try to mimic it.  “It is still day fifteen, after all.  No need to rush headlong into tradition.”_

_“In that case,” Damen smiled and allowed his lips to touch Laurent at last. His hands circled Laurent’s waist from behind and tugged expertly at his laces.  “Call for the steward.  We need to reschedule the trade meetings.”_

_“But—but they aren’t for another day and a half,” Laurent stutters, melting back against Damen’s chest._

_“Your meaning is?” Damen murmurs as he dips his hand into Laurent’s trousers, bringing his other hand up to cup his face.  Laurent sighs in appreciation._

_“You know,” Laurent kisses the words into Damen’s upturned palm, “I believe I’ve thoroughly forgotten it.”_

_____________

“Exalted,” the proprietor says, bowing low.  “It is an honor.”  As Damen merely stands there, breathing and nodding, the man smiles in understanding.  “It is to be a surprise for His Majesty, yes?  A gift for your First Night together.”

It throws Damen even further off his stride, because he can hear the words as a title in the manner with which the proprietor speaks them.  To hear the terminology again, a year after he has abolished slavery, is disorienting.  He rights himself after a few deep breaths.  Of course the common folk had never kept slaves, and had never used the words thusly.  A First Night was, for them, a reference to any couple’s first wedded night.  

“You are right, of course,” he smiles, steadying himself.  “I am calling you ‘proprietor’ inside my head. Might I know your name, sir?”  Pleased and honored, the shopkeeper bows deeply.  

“I am called Kiton, Exalted.  Do you have a sketch of your design?  Or do you need guidance in choosing something?”  Damen draws forth the pilfered document from his pouch.  The proprietor—Kiton—nods sagely.

“’Tis his Majesty’s own hand, is it not?”  Damen’s surprise must have shown on his face, and from the corner of his eye he sees Nikandros raise up on one elbow as well, curious.  “I’ve seen it many times, of course, along with your own, Exalted, on the posted decrees.”

“Ah, yes.  Of course you have,” Damen smiles.  “Can you duplicate it?”

“It is a simple matter to do so, Exalted.”  Then, perhaps thinking he was giving insult in some way, he continued.  “That is to say, His Majesty has a very fine hand, but I have many years of practice, and Veretian characters are not unknown to me.”

There is something—a lilt at the end of his declaration—that gives Damen pause.  Without his years as a commander, he would not have recognized it, that hesitation that heralds a man holding back on an uncomfortable truth.  Nikandros, too, is watching with interest, propped upright on the side the apprentice is not preparing for the tattoo, though it does little to abate the young man’s irritation at the interruption.

“You have another idea, Kiton?  A suggestion?” Damen asks.  The man is presumably skilled, if the various sketches on the walls are to be weighed as evidence.  He’d be foolish to ignore the stablemaster’s advice about a horse.  A permanent mark on his own skin should probably rate just as highly.  Kiton bows low once more.

“I wouldn’t presume to alter—that is to say, it was merely a fleeting—oh, here, please, Exalted.  A moment.”  He opens a drawer and removes a sheet of onionskin paper, as fine as Laurent’s own pale skin, Damen thinks warmly.  Placing the sheet atop the scrap of document Damen had brought, he inks a rapid copy.

“Now, don’t worry, this is just a quick sketch; I’ll practice several more times while your skin is being treated to ensure its accuracy,” Kiton reassures him as he places the delicate paper in Damen’s huge, dark hand.

He doesn’t understand the need for Kiton’s humility, as it looks for all the world as though Damen is holding a direct copy of Laurent’s own hand.  In fact, had he not known better, he would swear it was written by Laurent himself, except for the small, delicate embellishment that Kiton had been agonizing over suggesting.  Somehow, though it were an image and not a word, even so it harkened the particular turn of a quill, hinted at the same tiny swoops, and mimicked how Laurent wrote.

Damen let the smile spread bright and broad across his face, feeling truly right in his decision for the first time all day.  From the corner of his eye he sees Nikandros straining and stretching up from his pallet, trying to see for himself, and shifts his shoulders playfully to block his view.  Nik can wait until it’s done.

“It’s perfect, O Master of Inks,” Damen laughs.  “Shall we begin?”

_________

A servant arrives at his chambers the night Damen receives the tattoo, which is also the first night he is to spend apart from Laurent.  He and Nik had timed the visit to the inking parlor to coincide with the twelve nights, to give it time to heal before the wedding. 

Damen is already regretting the last cup of ale he’d shared with Nikandros—perhaps the last two cups.  A late night missive was usually bad news, and the speed at which the messenger scurried away was likely due to the expression Damen must have worn at the door.  His attitude changes completely when he recognizes Laurent’s hand, and he tears open the envelope.

** **

Laurent writes him a letter for each of the twelve nights they are apart, sending them with a servant to Damen's rooms each evening.  Damen finds himself more eager for bedtime than a man with no bed partner might reasonably be expected to be.  

Some are wickedly funny, including several thousands of words detailing a journey through Laurent’s mind as he became irrevocably drunk on Makedon’s uncle’s griva. Damen laughs until he cries. 

On night number three there arrives a simple note, so short that he has read it in its entirety before he has fully closed the door on its bearer.  Titled “Auguste”, it consists of nothing but Auguste’s name, and three other words:  **_I forgive you._**   Damen falls to his knees, devastated by four syllables and in awe of the strength of the man who wrote them. He wakes up cold and stiff on the castle's stone floor the next morning, yet feeling freer than he had when the collar was struck away.

One letter is simply a businesslike outline of how Laurent foresees the final merging of their kingdoms. But the earnestness of parity and honor Laurent writes into it is such a clear marker of Damen's sensibilities that it makes him ache with affection.  Others are shorter, touching insights Laurent had learned about the man he would eventually marry that Laurent had not yet shared, gleaned from Damen's time in his service.

There is a story of Nicaise, the words inked with pen-strokes less elegant and somewhat shakier than those of the other missives.  It transforms midway into a discussion of how Laurent would try deeply to think his way around bastardy in order to allow he and Damen a proper, blood heir for Artes.  Damen cries after that one, as well.

Realizing how much he's still to discover about Laurent sends feelings of exhilaration and joy through Damen, as he imagines the years that they’ll spend together, unveiling each others’ secret fears and childhood mischiefs.

Two of the missives are so scorchingly lewd that Damen cannot keep his hands from himself, thrusting with abandon into his own oiled fist.  Once, he climaxes so hard that he breaks open the tattoo scab upon his hip, and in a full circle of irony, has to send to Pascal for a salve.

He thinks he should send his own letter to Laurent about that one.

_________

“What is this, husband?”

The very word on Laurent’s lips makes Damen want to take him to bed, but he has a plan to stick to.  The day’s endless ceremonies are finally over, and it’s just the two of them in their chambers.  Their small necessities are all back in place, having been relegated to different quarters during the twelve nights.  

The chambers themselves have been redone here in Ios, as he expects they will find in Ravenel when they arrive there for their second ceremony.  Both his and Laurent’s sensibilities can be seen in the decor.  Placed for tonight especially, candles throw star-like light against tiny mirrors affixed behind them, illuminating the room, and Laurent.

Damen can’t stop looking at him, all in flawless, snowy white with laces of silver.

“It appears to be a letter,” Damen says as carelessly as he can manage.

“The subject of it being?” Laurent persists, holding it as he moves closer into the reach of Damen’s arms, should he stretch them out.  Damen doesn’t.

“It is a response to one of your letters, as a matter of fact.”

“Oh?” Laurent says in a bored tone.  “Which one, I wonder?”

“I believe you know,” Damen answers, stepping closer as well.  They still aren’t touching each other, Damen’s own cloth-of-gold raiment seeming to grow warm in Laurent’s proximity.

“Should I read it now?”  Anyone who didn’t know Laurent would think him entirely disinterested in the prospect.  But there’s a hitch in his voice that belies his choice of words, a flutter of his lashes betraying his anticipation.  Damen wants very much to keep him on that knife-edge.

“Save it for later,” he orders, letting the tone of command slip into his voice.  “In case your ardor wanes and mine has yet to.”  Actual surprise crosses Laurent’s face, before transforming into his own particular sort of cool indignation.

“If you find my ardor waning on our wedding night, then rest assured that it will be due entirely to my having married the wrong barbarian,” Laurent says, tossing the letter on the dressing table behind him and reaching out to rest his hand on Damen’s groin, as if inspecting the goods.

Damen smiles, slow and heated, allowing Laurent his brazen fondling.

“If that is truly your concern, you should remove your hands before the option of an annulment is voided,” he laughs, then inhales sharply as Laurent tires of feeling him through the cloth and reaches under his heavy, golden chiton.

“Are you saying no one would take the word of the King of Artes, should he claim to be untouched?” Laurent says, stroking Damen too delicately to do any real good.

“I am saying…” Damen grits out, pulling Laurent close with both hands on Laurent’s round backside, trapping Laurent’s arm between them, “that no one will look at those bedsheets in the morning and believe for a moment you are chaste.”

“No one believes that now,” Laurent answers crisply.

Damen snorts and presses close, hitching his hips into Laurent’s grip. With his hand caught between them, Laurent cannot stop Damen rubbing himself against his palm.

“It seems the advantage is mine,” Damen smiles.  Laurent’s head is dipped, the golden curtain of his hair hiding a fair face that Damen knows is flushed with desire.  He can feel the tight muscles of Laurent’s backside tensing and trembling.  He suddenly, badly wants to see Laurent’s eyes, and so bends and noses his way along Laurent’s face.  He doesn’t kiss, but merely traces his lips along the cut of Laurent’s jaw.  

Slowly Damen makes his way across the soft, pale skin, banking sensations one upon the next like coals in a fire pit, before he feels Laurent accede, and his head lift.

“You—you think the very idea of a few words scratched in your illegible hand will turn the tide in your favor?” Laurent asks, but the tremor in his body is now evident in his voice as well, and there is a tiny ghost of a smile in the corner of his mouth.  Damen takes his moment, stealing a kiss just as Laurent’s mouth opens on the final syllable, eyes open and watching Laurent the whole while, who holds his gaze.  “Your opinion of my resolve has declined, evidently,” Laurent finishes, as soon as Damen releases his lips.

“Your opinion of my battle readiness has declined as well,” Damen laughs.

“You can explain yourself while you attend me,” Laurent answers, collecting himself and extending an upturned wrist.

“Very well,” Damen replies.  “Husband.”  He knows it was exactly the right thing to say when he hears Laurent’s breath hitch.  He holds Laurent’s gaze as long as he can as he draws the laces free, dropping it only to move around to his sides and back.  Damen almost regrets driving them both to this heated pitch, for though he goes slowly and lays kisses at each freed juncture, he could have made it last hours.  Next time, he thinks; after all, they have yet another wedding night to come.  He leaves Laurent the loosed shirt—so sheer as to be indecent—and kneels behind him to see to his boots and the laces at Laurent's ankles.

“I mean only that I know my husband well enough to go into a contest with more than one advantage at hand,” Damen elaborates.

“So, your intent is to be a general at plunder, as if I am the spoils of battle?”  Damen thinks Laurent doesn't at all sound opposed to the notion, and packs that away in his mind for another time.

“On the contrary, Majesty,” Damen grins, rising and moving around Laurent to loosen the final laces.  They are caging the evidence of Laurent’s arousal, and Damen is certain they are all that is aiding his control.  “I intend to compel you into ravishing me,” he says, smiling into Laurent’s blue gaze.  Damen drops back to his knees and presses his face into the vee of Laurent’s legs, inhaling deeply before allowing the trousers to drop.  He feels Laurent’s fingers in his hair, spasming with indecision.  He can feel the heat of him next to his face, rigid and leaking just to the left of Damen’s jaw, but Damen doesn’t move.

“This—bears a striking resemblance to _you_ ravishing _me_ ,” Laurent whispers softly.  Damen looks up to find Laurent’s dark gaze consuming him, feels Laurent’s hands carding through and untangling his curls, dark and (under protest) gilded with golden paints.

“That is only because I’ve yet to give you your final wedding gift,” Damen smiles, rising and unpinning his chiton at the shoulder.  He sits back upon their bed, holding the fabric, shot through with real gold, against him.  Laurent kneels in return, taking only a moment to unlace Damen’s sandals and slip them off.  When Laurent stands, he toys with the hem of the sheer, billowing shirt.

“It’s not hiding anything, you know,” Damen grins.  Laurent sniffs.

“A flimsy shield to none, until the final strategy is revealed,” he says in return, with a pointed look at Damen’s still-covered groin.  

“Fair enough,” Damen shrugs amiably.  “You can read the letter now.  Aloud, if your spine is not yet too watery.”  With narrowed gaze and a haughty tilt of his chin, Laurent turns and retrieves it from the table.

Though Laurent is turned slightly away to gain the light of a candle and he cannot see his face, Damen can tell by the trembling of the paper in Laurent’s hand that his words have had a profound affect.  Before they can unmake Laurent completely, he lifts the chiton and tosses it away, laying himself back against the sheets.  Eyes drawn by the movement, Laurent turns fully back toward him, affording Damen the enticing silhouette of his lean, muscled frame inside the candle-lit gauzy shirt.

Damen knows himself to be attractive, and could reason without conceit that the gaze of any other man would be immediately drawn to his newly revealed arousal.

Not Laurent’s.

Laurent’s eyes are like a predator’s, immediately focusing on the outline of what does not belong in the landscape, hunting it down.

 

“What.” he says, gripping the nearest candle and moving closer, “Is. That?” Laurent breathes. 

“The proof of my words,” Damen says softly, watching Laurent’s face.  He has yet to tear his eyes away from where, in the soft, thigh place between cock and hipbone, where the big vessel carries life from a man’s heart, Damen has placed Laurent’s name in Veretian blue, written in Laurent’s own ornate hand, along with the golden star of Vere.  “A marriage contract may be burned.  A cuff may be struck away.”  Damen leaves the rest unsaid.

Laurent’s gaze skitters momentarily up to Damen’s face, but is immediately drawn back to the tattoo.  When he brings the candle near for a closer view, a drop of wax falls to rest on the ‘L’.  Damen hisses and jerks, his hand moving to wipe it away, and Laurent does not stop him, instead climbing onto the bed and straddling Damen’s thigh.

The second drop is not an accident.  

Damen endures the momentary sear, this time without moving.  Instead he watches Laurent atop him, somehow more alluring in the transparent shift of a shirt than he would be without it.  Laurent’s cock lays heavy and hot along the top of Damen’s thigh, the join of Laurent’s legs pressing humidly down upon him.

The third drop comes while Laurent’s gaze is fixed on the whole of Damen’s length, which obediently reacts, a few silvery beads mimicking the candle wax to drip upon his belly.  Laurent hums, pleased, beginning to scrape away the previous wax and rocking gracefully atop Damen’s thigh.  They continue on this way, Laurent tilting more wax onto his own name, making pleased hums in a voice a register lower than Damen has ever heard him to use.  Damen twitches, hissing deep breaths inward that somehow do not afford him enough air, and feels more and more lost to himself.  Finally, after the tattoo has been covered and breathed upon and scraped clean and reddened, Laurent stops.  

Apparently unwilling to disengage from Damen’s body, and needing to rid himself of the candle, Laurent chucks the entire thing into the bedside pitcher.  He grips Damen, his right hand on the splay of Damen’s opposite hip, and the left around Damen’s ribs, and begins to rut against him.

It simply cannot be called anything else.  Laurent moves with a single purpose in mind—utterly focused his own climax.  It’s the most primal thing Damen has ever seen him do.  Leaking steadily now and seduced by Laurent’s rhythm, Damen takes himself in hand only to be batted away by Laurent.

“No.”  

“Laurent…” he groans.

“No.”  Damen can feel the wetness from Laurent’s own cock, slicking the way across the reddened skin where he marked himself for Laurent.

It’s maddening.

“There exists—a—another letter,” Damen gasps desperately.  There’s a pause, and with great effort Laurent stills his hips, looking directly at Damen’s face for the first time since Damen had revealed himself. His eyes are huge, blue-black like the deepest parts of the ocean at night, and his lips are pink and swollen from the press of his own teeth.  His hair is darkly burnished, nearly bronze with sweat, sticking to his nape, and as Damen watches a droplet trickles down the side of Laurent’s throat.

“Oh?”

“I’ll tell you what it says if—“ 

“You’ll tell me anyway,” Laurent commands imperiously, resuming his sinuous movements against Damen’s hip.  Damen lets out a frustrated growl. 

“I’ll burn it,” he threatens.

“You will not,” Laurent says, but then, in a shakier voice, “You’ll tell me and—and I’ll do whatever you ask for in it.”  He grips Damen’s cock and begins to stroke it himself at last.  Damen groans in relief, wrapping his arms around Laurent’s lower back, urging him on.

“It’s this,” he gasps.  “This.  You rutting and coming and rubbing your spendings into it.”  Laurent moans softly, hitching himself into place again and moving faster.    Damen had spent himself two nights ago, writing those very words, and now as Laurent’s grip on Damen’s cock spasms he’s lost, his climax rocketing though him again as it did that night while Laurent rides his thigh.

Damen is flying for long moments, but when he lands within himself again at last, Laurent, so tightly bound inside himself, Laurent who has to fight to let go, for whom every climax is a battle, is still rutting desperately against him.  Damen wants it for him.  He wants it very badly.

“There’s more,” he rasps, folding Laurent closer and bending his own knee up to cage him in.  He feels Laurent’s legs wind themselves even more intimately around his, his two thighs clenching around Damen’s one, toes pressing against the skin of Damen’s calf.

“I want your fingers on it,” Damen says, leaning close to Laurent’s ear.  Damen gathers his come from where it lay pooled on his belly, reaches between them and coats Laurent with it.  Laurent groans and hitches forward again, dipping his head and arching his spine to set his gaze on the tattoo.  Taking aim.

“More,” is all Laurent says, but he’s panting quickly, his pulse fluttering like a bird’s wings.  He’s close.

“I want you behind me, your fingers digging bruises into the mark…where you’re holding me…”  Damen feels himself rousing again at his own voice, his face heating at the sound of his fantasies, spoken aloud.  “Where you’re holding me—still—so you can—so you can—“

“Ride—“ Laurent calls out, only half a question and on the cusp, going still atop him.

“ _Mount,_ ” Damen growls, low and filthy, and that’s it, Laurent is lost, jerking against Damen and keening his release, while Damen spills for the second time.  He wraps his arms around Laurent as he spasms, again and again, petting him and gathering him close when the shudders slow.

He tips Laurent to the side, and after a moment’s assessment simply pulls the ruined shirt apart, the action made all the more simple by the sweat soaking through it.  He uses the soft silk to wipe down Laurent, who uncharacteristically allows him to dote, then himself, before tossing it away and gathering Laurent close under the bedding.

“Happy wedding, Husband,” Damen says after a while, and doesn’t bother keeping the bit of triumph from his voice.

“Proud, are you?” Laurent drawls, hoarse, and sounding only somewhat recovered.

“I simply feel the happiness of knowing you enjoyed your gift.”

“Not smug at all about your choice, I see.”

“I thought you’d enjoy the conceit of it.  Fucking yourself,” Damen smiles.

“Hmmm,” Laurent hums mildly.  Then, after seeming to consider something, he sits up, pushing the bedclothes down to look once more at his signature upon Damen’s skin.  He traces his finger along his own indigo handwriting, then through all twelve points of the Veretian star, inked in with gold.

“You said it was gaudy, before.” It’s a question, in that way Laurent has of asking a question that isn’t really asking at all.

“Yes.”

“Yet you chose it anyway.”

“I did.”

Laurent waits.

Damen waits. 

It’s a particular tactic of Laurent’s, this pause.  Laurent hates to ask _why?_ He prides himself on being able to discern a man’s motives, and the motives behind those motives.  When he cannot, he simply remains silent, and waits for the person in question to explain themselves, as they inevitably do.

Damen is nearly asleep when Laurent capitulates with a frustrated little noise.  Damen hides his smile.

“So why mark yourself forever with something you thought was ugly?”  he asks.  Damen yawns and repositions himself so he can look directly at Laurent.  He’s almost afraid to move.  Laurent has never lain so long in his arms after their couplings, and Damen doesn’t want to let him go.

“There is no more Vere,” he says, drawing Laurent’s fingers to the mark and holding his gaze.  “There are no more slaves.”  He feels Laurent’s fingers stroke slowly across the skin there.  Not hesitantly, but with confidence, just as Damen had hoped.

“But there are things in that past that deserve remembrance,” Damen continues.  “That star flew above the field when I won my kingdom back, and when you finally won what was yours by rights all along. Its soldiers helped make that happen.”  Damen pauses.  “And I would be happier at your feet again, a Veretian slave to the end of my days, than I would as a free man without you.”

“Well.”  

Laurent says nothing more for a long while, before continuing.  The fingers on Damen’s skin tremble just a tiny bit.  “No need for all that.  I certainly don’t want the work of running this gigantic kingdom alone,” Laurent says thickly, as if he’d not waited several long minutes between statements to find his words.

“I’m sure,” Damen says dryly, smiling against Laurent’s shoulder.  He’s almost asleep again when Laurent rouses him with a shake.

“Are there more letters?  I wrote twelve, after all,” he says, his tone clearly indicating that Damen had been negligent.

“One was a list of possible foreign trade investments,” Damen points out.  “I hardly think that counts.  And _you_ said not to write any.”  He shifts deeper into the bedding, pulling Laurent closer and nuzzling into the join of his neck and shoulder.

“Yes, well.  That was before I thought you’d be any good at them.” 

**Author's Note:**

> For my favorite CP fangirls. You know who you are.


End file.
